LBSD 2021 celebrated by 370 bike shops across UK

Local Bike Shop Day 2021 was celebrated by 370 bike shops across the UK, an increase of 37% from the previous year, with some IBDs offering their customers discounted products, free bike services or guided bike rides.

Local Bike Shop Day – organised for the industry, by the industry – is the day for bike shops to showcase and promote the passion, knowledge and personalised service they offer to their local communities and, in doing so, driving more footfall through their doors.

This year’s day was Saturday 28th August, falling at an ideal time to encourage children to cycle when they return to school and inspiring the nation to continue cycling after the seasonal good weather comes to an end.

Local Bike Shop Day, administered by the ACT, was supported by a record number of cycling organisations, including the All Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW), BikeBiz, BikeIsBest, Butterworth Spengler, Cycle To Work Day, Cyclescheme, Cycling UK, Cytech, Department for Transport, Freewheel, Insync, London E-bike Festival, Love to Ride, PaceUp Media, Raleigh UK, Sustrans, The Cycle Show, Total MTB, Transport for London, V12 Retail Finance and ZyroFisher.

In the campaign’s final two weeks, the hashtags #supportyourlocalbikeshop and #localbikeshopday reached around 250,000 users on Twitter alone and on the platform, all posts mentioning Local Bike Shop Day had over 300,000 impressions/views. On Twitter and Instagram, the number of people following the accounts increased by 40% in the final fortnight of the initiative.

The website’s most popular page was the “find a local bike shop” search facility indicating consumers actively looking for their local participating shop. A number of the campaign’s supporters arranged competitions and discounts, which included:

– A £1,400 RoZone cleaning bundle that was up for grabs to IBDs
– £50 off Cytech Theory one for the week of Local Bike Shop Day
– 15% off the Freewheel website for the week of Local Bike Shop Day
– The opportunity for IBDs to win a £100 voucher to spend on Raleigh goodies
– Six of the most social media engaged IBDs to win £200 in vouchers to take their staff out courtesy of Cyclescheme
– Four customers to win a £250 cycling gift card who requested or redeemed a Cyclescheme certificate in a participating shop on Local Bike Shop Day

This year also saw a number of celebrities jumping on board to celebrate Local Bike Shop Day; local bike shops across the nation were praised by the likes of TV personality Gail Porter, Cycling Surgeon Chris Oliver as well as Olympians Katie Archibald, Sharron Davies and Kye White.

Cycle King & Hawk Cycles were able to offer everyone a free bike check on Local Bike Shop Day across all its stores. Alongside this, it was offering double points on its Spend & Save loyalty scheme whenever a customer bought in-store that day.

Cycle Solutions Uplands provided complimentary Local Bike Shop Day Goodie Bags containing Muc-Off and Clif Bar freebies, as well as giving away free GG’s gelato to all customers, old and new. It also gave customers bonus points and entered them into a prize draw to win a £100 voucher.

Inspiral Cycles celebrated the day in Durham and worked hard to promote the day on social media in the weeks running up to the big day. Fiona, Gary and the team and said of their involvement: “We were blown away by some of the comments our customers posted online for Local Bike Shop Day in support of Inspiral Cycles as their LBS. It was a great focus for our social media posts and they were shared widely. Support for #supportyourlocalbikeshop increased our online profile and has led to new customers discovering our shop.”

Get ready for Local Bike Shop Day 2022
Local Bike Shop Day is an industry-wide initiative managed by the ACT. If you would like to get in touch about next year’s Local Bike Shop Day please email info@theact.org.uk.

Keep your eyes peeled for the new date for Local Bike Shop Day 2022.